Lynn Townsend White Jr.

Um, some people blame, as you, as you've mentioned, Christianity.

Um, that was first put forward by a Harvard medieval historian called Lynn White Jr. who wrote a paper in 1967 on this, the historic roots of our ecological crisis, b- laying the blame squarely at the feet of Christianity, and, um, never has a paper been more hotly debated to this day.

Um, clearly the Industrial Revolution played a huge part.

Um, now people are no longer, you know, living in, in rural s- small rural communities.

So a poor friar's poem became the title of a message addressed to the whole world 800 years later.

In 1967, a historian named Lynn White Jr. published a famous essay in the Journal of Science about the roots of our ecological crisis.

And his conclusion startled everyone.

He said the crisis would not be solved by technology alone, because it's really a crisis of how we humans see nature.

Take for instance, respect for nature.

You know, in 1967, Lynn White wrote a seminal article in the Science magazine.

The world is considered to be secular.

There is no sacredness in the world.

You can't create forests and you can't create tigers at the same time.

How great our ancients must have been.

So Lynn White said, it is because the monotheistic faith said that God created the world for the enjoyment of man, man devastated nature.

30% of the f- uh, rainforest were destroyed in a matter of 300 years.

I mean, obviously there were other historical factors at play, but this was a key step.

But what's interesting is that the most famous proponent of this view today, Lynn White Jr., was not defending Christianity.

He was criticizing it, because according to him, this Christian outlook has led to our current environmental and ecological crisis, because we also lost our reverence for nature.

Of course, Christian apologists tend to pick up the first part of this idea while leaving out the latter bit, but we've considered this topic back in episode 8 of this season when we discussed the idea of progress, so let's return to our current question of the first commandment.